Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jul 2016
208 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
For readers of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk and
Lacerating and lyrical, We Come to Our Senses centers on men and women affected by combat directly and tangentially, and the peculiar legacies of war. The story "Evie M." is about a vet turned office clerk whose petty neuroses derail even her suicide; in "We Come to Our Senses," a hip young couple leaves the city for the sticks, trading film festivals for firearms; in "Colleen" a woman redeploys to her Mississippi hometown, and confronts the superior who abused her at war; and in "11/19/98" a couple obsesses over sitcoms and retail catalogs, extracting joy and deeper meaning. The story "Hers" is about the sexual politics of a combat zone.
"Starred Review. Superb atmospherics and dramatic timing coupled with arresting storylines. A promising start, if sobering for readers unused to the grim realities of war." - Kirkus
"Lindsey brings an essential new voice to the traumas of war's lasting aftermath." - Publishers Weekly
"Not only compulsively readable, the thoughts these war stories stirred were rich and complex and heartening in their universal humanity. This is a remarkable collection by a splendid new writer." - Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
"The writing here is nuanced, correct, and felt enough that, for once, 'Support Our Troops' is not political pablum. One might say that in Odie Lindsey's care 'Support Our Troops' is a literary imperative." - Padgett Powell, author of Cries for Help, Various
"The debut we hope for: heart-quickening, kinetic, relentless in its engagement with our time." - Paul Yoon
"With a searing insightfulness and a dark humor all his own, Odie Lindsey holds up a powerful lens to an experience of modern American warfare that has been largely ignored in fiction - that of female veterans. This is collection about how the battles we wage with the external world are really only half the fight." - Bonnie Jo Campbell, National Book Award Finalist and author of Once Upon a River
"[A] gritty and ambitious debut collection…Odie Lindsey is an innovative and consummate prose stylist." - Mary Miller, author of The Last Days of California
"Here's an exciting, even thrilling new voice I'm delighted to read, to hear in my head. He's got all the notes, he's all in. Odie Lindsey's a terrific writer - pitch-perfect, entirely under control at high speed - who doesn't hold anything back." - Brad Watson, author of Aliens in the Primes of Their Lives
This information about We Come to Our Senses was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Nancy Russell
Odie Lindsey is the author of Some Go Home and We Come to Our Senses: Stories. He received an NEA fellowship for combat veterans, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA from the University of Mississippi, and is Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University's Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
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